Overclocking i5-4670k

doveman

doveman

doveman

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I just got round to building my i5-4670k/Asus Z97-A system with the Scythe Kotetsu HSF the other day. Did a build for my Dad with the same mobo/CPU but the Hyper 212 Evo HSF a couple of months ago and that works fine at [email protected]


My system at 3.8Ghz and in High Performance mode to keep the CPU at a fixed speed/voltage (monitored with HwInfo)

Idle:
CPU Fan: 780 PM
Chassis Fan: 1000 RPM

CPU: 41c
Cores, 42, 38, 40, 36

The fans were a bit noisy like that so I manually edited their profiles in the BIOS.

CPU Fan: 742 RPM
Chassis Fan: 318 RPM

CPU: 46c
Cores: 45, 42, 44, 41

Aida64 Stess Test for 30mins:

immediate:
CPU: 60c
Cores: 59.5, 59, 59, 54

after 30mins:
CPU Fan: 940 RPM
Chassis Fan: 325 RPM (I had this tied to the motherboard temp, so it didn't speed up, I changed it to follow the CPU speed after this)
CPU: 60c
Cores: 60.2, 59.3, 59, 54.5 (Avg), 67, 67, 66, 61 (Max)

immediately after stopping Aida64:
CPU: 47c
Cores: 47,44,44,41

I tweaked the fans a bit more and added a Scythe 120mm intake fan.

Ambient temp was 24c.

Idle:
CPU Fan: 780 RPM
Intake fan: 440 RPM
Exhust Fan: 370 RPM

CPU: 40c
Cores, 41, 38, 39, 33

Aida64 for 30mins:
CPU Fan: 935 RPM
Intake: 435 RPM
Exhaust: 544 RPM

CPU: 55.8c (Avg), 62c (Max)
Cores: 55, 54, 54, 50 (Avg), 62, 62, 61, 56 (max)

I wonder if the fact that core 4 is running a bit cooler than the others indicates that I haven't applied the TIM very well, or if that's just normal?

For comparison, here's a screenshot from testing my Dad's build (with the Hyper 212 Evo) also running at 3.8 Ghz but at 1.173v, whilst mine is at 1.1v. His CPU fan was running at 1000 RPM and there was an intake fan and exhaust fan running at 792 RPM and 969 RPM (not sure which was which).



---
Next, I overclocked to 4.4 Ghz @1.225v (still running in High Performance to lock the clockspeed). Ambient temp was 25c. I tweaked the fans a bit more.

Idle:
CPU fan: 820 RPM
Intake fan: 670 RPM
Exhaust: 530 RPM
CPU: 43c
Cores, 43, 40, 41, 36

Aida64 for 30mins:
CPU Fan: 1080 RPM
Intake: 715 RPM
Exhaust: 870 RPM
CPU: 66c (Avg), 73c (Max)
Cores: 63, 62, 62, 56 (Avg), 72, 71, 70, 66 (max)

immediately after stopping:
CPU: 44c
Cores: 44,43,42,37

So it doesn't seem to be doing much better than the Hyper 212 Evo in my Dad's build. Here's the results with that at [email protected] running Aida64 (ambient was 3c higher at 28c):



Even taking into account he's using a different case and fans, which were running at different speeds to mine (his vs mine: CPU 990 RPM vs 1080 RPM, Intake 1080 RPM vs 715 RPM, Exhaust 915 RPM vs 870 RPM), I was hoping for better results with the Kotetsu. Comparing the max. core temps:

His: 77, 76,73, 69
Mine: 72, 71, 70, 66

and taking the +3c in ambient temp into account, the decrease is -2c for cores 0 and 1 and 0c for cores 2 and 4, which could just be down to my more open Coolermaster HAF XB case compared to his NZXT Source 530 (with top vents blocked off).

It does seem my 4670k just isn't as good as my Dad's one sadly. At [email protected] it was fine with Aida64 stresstest but BSOD running ArmA3, just on the menus not even running a mission, with "WHEA Uncorrectable Error".

I bumped it up to 1.25v and it's fine now. I might be able to decrease it a bit still from there. Even though I'm using the superior Scythe Kotetsu HSF compared to my Dad's Hyper 212 Evo, temps were about the same at [email protected], so it'll be running hotter at 1.25v. I haven't bothered running Aida64 @1.25v yet though, so I'm not sure exactly how much higher but ArmA3 only pushed it to about 60c, so it's fine for normal use.

I was hoping to overclock it a bit higher than 4.4Ghz but it's not the end of the world if I can't. I do want to make sure the HSF is cooling properly though, so I'd welcome any advice as the Kotetsu doesn't seem to be doing as well as it should.

I have to admit, I wasn't entirely happy with my TIM application. The guides suggest a 1mm vertical line but that's tiny and seems impossible, as pushing the plunger on the syringe (MX-2 in this case) doesn't give great control and it tends to come out with a bigger amount than is ideal, so I just try and spread that down in a line, adding a bit more if it starts to run out. In this case, I ended up with a bit of a gap in the middle, so added some there to make sure it was covered. I took a photo of it just in case it didn't seem to be performing very well:


I don't think my application when doing my Dad's build was much different though, except for the extra blob in the middle as I think I was able to just spread it down in a line in one go in that case.
 
Damn thing just gave me "WHEA Uncorrectable Error" again, whilst at [email protected]. Surely I don't need to increase the voltage even higher for this basic overclock?

I was running DCS World at the time. Played ArmA3 for several hours the other day at these settings, which was what triggered the same error @1.225v.

Had some weird stuff happening shortly before it BSOD as well. First, I noticed that VAC (Voice Assisted Commands) wasn't working, so I opened the editor to check and the My Documents\VAC folder was completely empty. OK, I thought, at least I'm running Crashplan to backup my files, so I tried to restore with that but each time it would say completed but in the results it showed 0 restored files and indeed, nothing was restored. After rebooting following the BSOD, Crashplan worked fine to restore these files (it restores them to the desktop for you to move to wherever) but then I checked My Documents\VAC and all the files were already back again!
 
You need more voltage. Basically, Haswell is a crap clocker and some don't even hit 4.4Ghz. Mine needs 1.265v for 4.4Ghz, 1.285v for 4.5Ghz and it just gets silly after that. It also needs CPU Input Voltage increasing to 1.9v for anything over 4.2Ghz.
 
pastymuncher said:
You need more voltage. Basically, Haswell is a crap clocker and some don't even hit 4.4Ghz. Mine needs 1.265v for 4.4Ghz, 1.285v for 4.5Ghz and it just gets silly after that. It also needs CPU Input Voltage increasing to 1.9v for anything over 4.2Ghz.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had a bad feeling when I did my Dad's build that he was getting the good overclocker and I was going to end up with a crap one. Oh well, I'm not pulling apart his system just to swap them over now, even if I do need it more than him ;)

How can I test stability properly though if Aida64 doesn't trigger the BSOD, only playing (certain) games and even then it can happen randomly after playing for some time?

I didn't play ArmA3 or DCS World on my Dad's build, so it's possible they might trigger a BSOD at his apparently stable [email protected] but I did try X-Plane for a bit, so hopefully that would have triggered it if there was a problem that only becomes apparent when playing games and not from running Aida64.
 
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Weirdness. My CPU multi is locked at 34x (on all four cores) this morning, after resuming from standby, despite being set to 44x in the BIOS. Not sure if it was like this before I put it to sleep for the night yesterday though.
 
What about LLC? My BIOS has settings 1-9 for that, so should I just set it to the Max? I didn't have to do anything with that for my Dad's build, just left it on Auto but maybe I need to use it for my CPU?
 
So I changed the Vcore from 1.25v to 1.26v, the CPU Input voltage from Auto (1.76v) to 1.8v. I didn't touch the Cache voltage, which was on Auto and fluctuating between something like 1.163v and 1.176v.

Yet after rebooting, still HwInfo shows the Core Multis are locked at 38x instead of the 44x set in the BIOS!
 
Sometimes games that you play can be the best way to test stability. It just seems more applicable to haswell than other cpu's. Before Haswell came along a stress test would show up a unstable clock rather quickly. If I remember right I have my LLC set to 4 or 5.
 
First off, do you have the latest bios for your board? It sound's like you have not set something in the bios and it's just hitting max turbo. Have you got the following settings?

AI Overclock Tuner - Manual
CPU Core Ratio - Sync all cores
Ratio Limit - 44x
 
I did have Sync All Cores and Ratio 44x, not sure about AI Overclock Tuner, I'll have to check that.

More wierdness though. I shutdown and killed the power completely and after restarting, the BIOS Ratio Limit had reset to Auto. It was definitely on 44x before I killed the power as I'd only just checked it. Everything else was how I left it, so I set it back to 44x and now it's OK in Windows and stays at that in High Performance mode and downclocks to 800Mhz (VID stays at 1.26v though) in Balanced mode.

I'm running BIOS v1204, which was the latest when I did my Dad's build and so the one he's running. There's a v1205 been released now, so I might as well upgrade to that.

LLC is currently on Auto but that might not matter so much now I've increased the voltages. It might be better if I can reduce the voltages and set LLC to prevent vdroop though. It says it goes up to 115% at LLC 9, so I guess around 7 would be 100% but I'm not sure.

Maybe if games show stability issues better with Haswell than a test like Aida64, it would be better to run some graphical benchmarks? Maybe they still won't stress the system in the same way as an actual game though?
 
Tested it with Aida64, more to check temperatures than stability.

VID/Vcore 1.26v, CPU Input 1.8v, Ambient 25c

Idle:
CPU Fan: 860 RPM
Intake: 690 RPM
Exhaust: 540 RPM
CPU: 45c
Cores: 45, 42, 43, 38

Immediately after starting test:
CPU Fan: 1090 RPM
Intake: 725 RPM
Exhaust: 950 RPM
CPU: 72c
Core: 70, 70, 64, 68

After 30mins:
CPU Fan: 1140 RPM
Intake Fan: 730 RPM
Exhaust Fan: 1010 RPM
CPU: 68.1c (Avg), 76c (Max)
Cores: 63.6, 65, 65.3, 60.7 (Avg), 76, 75, 76, 70 (Max)

I was a bit surprised to see that the core temps fluctuated between around 60c and 70c, whilst they're constantly loaded at 100% and fan speeds are more or less constant. Is it normal for them to vary this much under load?
 
doveman said:
Not yet. I'm a bit confused, as that guide doesn't appear to refer to Vring or VID. Do you mean CPU VRIN External Overide or CPU Ring Voltage when you say Vring? VID I can't see anything similar for in there.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the confusion, I have a gigabyte board so the names change a bit.

I mean CPU ring voltage in the first instance. Try bumping that up a 0.05, or maybe even 0.1 to start with. It creates some extra heat though.

CPU input voltage should be at least 1.9 when you're going for clocks this high. Mine's nearly at 2.0, but that might be a bit overkill, might not.

Cache voltage can be left at default if you don't overclock cache. It is a minimal benefit anyway.

Change Load Line calibration to at least level 5, if it's between 1-9. I don't remmeber what scale ASUS uses.

The core temps fluctuating between 60 and 70 is normal, for many reasons. For example, the load given to the cores changes in AIDA; the calculations keep changing. (Even if the load is still 100% constantly). Some calculations don't use AVX, some do, etc..

Haswell can be an annoying clocker, but playing around the voltages you should be able to eventually stabilize it to 4.4ghz if you want. Don't worry if your load temperatures in heavy games exceed 60, AIDA64/stress test temps don't mean much in the end because your rig will never experience anything like that in daily use.

I would normally stress test with 8 hours of AIDA, then 4 hours of Heaven, then just.. play whatever you want to play :P If temps do not exceed 65 in anything except AIDA, you're fine.
 
Make said:
Sorry for the confusion, I have a gigabyte board so the names change a bit.

I mean CPU ring voltage in the first instance. Try bumping that up a 0.05, or maybe even 0.1 to start with. It creates some extra heat though.

CPU input voltage should be at least 1.9 when you're going for clocks this high. Mine's nearly at 2.0, but that might be a bit overkill, might not.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification. Actually, it seems my Asus BIOS uses different names as well, as I don't see CPU ring voltage either. There's a video here showing the AI Tweaker page where all the overclocking settings are from 5:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJs1nY8_CY0

My Dad's PC is running fine at [email protected] with the CPU Input voltage left on Auto, which going by mine should be around 1.76v, so I don't think it's necessarily true that it needs to be at least 1.9v. Might be for my CPU though but I'll see how it goes at 1.8v first.
 
Having searched for the term, it seems the CPU ring voltage is another name for Uncore or Cache voltage, which leaves me all the more confused as you suggest increasing the CPU ring voltage first but then say to leave the Cache voltage at default unless I'm overclocking the cache.
 
The guides say it also stabilizes CPU OC, not just cache. I have found this to be true on both 4670k and G3258 that I own.
 
OK. I tried dropping the Vcore back down to 1.25v in case the other tweaks (CPU Input to 1.8v, LLC to 5) would make it stable at that but it BSOD in ArmA3 again, so I've put it back to 1.26v. I'll try bumping up the Uncore/Cache voltage a bit and see if that makes it stable at 1.25v.
 
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